Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[katy_did]

_______________________________
katy_did, I'm trying to find some innocent explanation for Raffaele's police interogation. You're not making this easy.

I admire your tenacity but your theory of Raffaele's police interrogation is also contradicted by the Matteini Report:

_________________________________________
"He [Raffaele] retracted his previous statement and justified his conduct by say that it was Knox who convinced him to give a false version of events." Matteini Report
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This is like déjà vu...

Your link to 'Matteini's report' is a link to a newspaper article; Matteini is a great deal more careful with her words than the Telegraph. IIRC you understand Italian, Fine. Why are you quoting from an English language newspaper article on the case, instead of from the original source of Matteini's report? Is it that what she actually says doesn't support what you're trying to argue?

And come to that, why are you quoting from the Telegraph's version of what Matteini says Raffaele says, instead of directly from the police statement? Surely the best way to find out what the statement says is to read it, not to read third-hand versions of it...

Before Judge Matteini ---and before the cops, too, as stated in his Diary--- he retracted his statement that Amanda had left him, and he blamed Amanda for "convincing" him to make the false statement. The false statement cannot be that she'd stayed with him all night.

No. Your understanding of this is back to front. During his police statement he retracts his earlier statements that he was with Amanda all night, not the bit about her leaving (this is the 'current' version of what happened at the time the statement was written).

It makes absolutely no sense that Amanda would tell Raffaele to say to the police that she left his flat and went to her house where Patrick murdered Meredith. Read his police statement again - this isn't what it says.

 

[babycondor]

_______________________________
Before Judge Matteini ---and before the cops, too, as stated in his Diary--- he retracted his statement that Amanda had left him, and he blamed Amanda for "convincing" him to make the false statement. The false statement cannot be that she'd stayed with him all night.///

So what exactly was the false statement that she supposedly convinced him to make?

I read it this way. I think Raffaele makes 2 retractions:

1. he retracts his statement that Amanda indiced him to say something untrue (whatever it was). I believe the police tricked him into falsely admitting "Amanda made me..." by asking him something like, "Didn't Amanda tell you to say this?" over and over again until he finally caved in and said "Yes, OK, yes, it's possible she did!!"
2. he retracts his statement that Amanda left his flat the night of the murder.

For Sollecito's translated diary on PMF:
"Nov 12 2007
The facts are taking their course and slowly I am realizing that
according to the fact which you, dad, that night sent me a message of
'goodnight' and also for the fact that the first statement made by me
saying that Amanda was all the night with me, I must say that 90% I
said the fat cavolata ... in my second statement. And that is:1 that Amanda brought me to say something stupid and I have repeated
that over and over again in the court of the squadra mobile;
2 reconstructing I am realizing that Amanda was actually very likely
with me all night, never leaving."

 

[Chris_Halkides]

one knife

sorry,but
The reality has proved that it has happened with two knives and a staged breakin.

Mrs.Columbo,

One knife could have made all three wounds. Raffaele's kitchen knife never left his apartment, except when the police confiscated it.

 

[Dan O.]

Fine, Matteini also wrote that Amanda met Patrick at the basketball court and that Raffaele's shoes were comparable with the bloody prints found at the cottage. I don't think Matteini can be relied on as a tomb of absolute knowledge.

 

[Justinian2]

sorry,but
The reality has proved that it has happened with two knives and a staged breakin.

You have no doubt about that? You're willing to stake your ego on that? You're a brave woman!

 

[Fine]

This is like déjà vu...

Your link to 'Matteini's report' is a link to a newspaper article; Matteini is a great deal more careful with her words than the Telegraph. IIRC you understand Italian, Fine. Why are you quoting from an English language newspaper article on the case, instead of from the original source of Matteini's report? Is it that what she actually says doesn't support what you're trying to argue?

And come to that, why are you quoting from the Telegraph's version of what Matteini says Raffaele says, instead of directly from the police statement? Surely the best way to find out what the statement says is to read it, not to read third-hand versions of it...



No. Your understanding of this is back to front. During his police statement he retracts his earlier statements that he was with Amanda all night, not the bit about her leaving (this is the 'current' version of what happened at the time the statement was written).

It makes absolutely no sense that Amanda would tell Raffaele to say to the police that she left his flat and went to her house where Patrick murdered Meredith. Read his police statement again - this isn't what it says.

_______________________________

katy_did,

Well, of course, Amanda wouldn't persuade him to say that. In my "Innocentisti" scenario she said no such thing. Raffaele misunderstood Amanda to be asking him to say that she'd left him to go to work (and not left him to go to the cottage). If Raffaele had been thinking straight, he would have asked her for a clarification, which would have corrected his misunderstanding of what Amanda had said. Apparently, he never asked. Maybe that conversation had been interrupted.

So........what the heck was Raffaele thinking when he misunderstood Amanda? Well, let's suppose he knew that Amanda hadn't left him that night, so in lying to the cops he must have imagined that it would serve some purpose for Amanda. Maybe he thought that Amanda had made some arrangement with Patrick in which Patrick would provide a stronger alibi, and that perhaps others working at Le Chic would support her "fresh alibi." And, he thought, with a stronger alibi perhaps the cops would stop the daily interogations. Whatever he was thinking he must have thought he was doing Amanda a favor in telling this lie to the cops, since doing so wouldn't serve his interests.

My Innocentisti theory is based on miscommunication between Amanda and Raffaele. Which is easy to imagine, and known to have happened.

///

 

[Supernaut]

Indeed I am. I have made this case the center of my life, and I am in daily contact with a large, well-educated and resourceful contingent of people who have done likewise. Our shared goal - our obsession - is to get Amanda and Raffaele out of prison, using whatever legal means are available. We will do it the easy way, or we will do it the hard way. We will follow a relatively quick route, or we will slog over a long and excruciating route. That choice is out of our hands, but the outcome is not.

Wow. Inspirational words.

All the very best to you and your cohorts, to Amanda, to her family and friends.

 

[Malkmus]

Some more citations from Loftus and other experts at UCI (University of California Irvine)

There are some methods of interrogation that are unwittingly or even deliberately suggestive. But there are some situations where law enforcement agencies essentially lie to people that they are interviewing. They say things like 'another witness claims to have seen you there' ... some sort of lies that they think will lead to a confession," she said.

As so often happens with impressionable and young suspects, Leo says, Michael reached a point where he began to say whatever the detectives wanted to hear - anything to make the interrogation end. He begins to express doubts about his own mind and memory, the detectives having convinced him that there is a mountain of evidence against him. At last he says on the tape that he may have done it without really remembering it.

The account of the crime police extracted from him did not match the evidence at the murder scene - although it did match preliminary information the interrogators had in hand about the girl's death, information that proved to be wrong. In later years, Leo would show how this sort of flaw can be a prime indicator of a false confession, evidence that the police, not the suspect, provided the story line.

their findings suggest that injustices tend to arise from the best, not the worst, of intentions, from genuine - if misguided - desire to protect the public, from conventional wisdom that is anything but wise, and from good-faith beliefs that are, nevertheless, as false as the memories they can generate.

http://www.injusticebusters.com/04/Loftus_Elizabeth.shtml

 

[Supernaut]

Wow. Inspirational words.

All the very best to you and your cohorts, to Amanda, to her family and friends.

If it appeared that I'd forgotten Raff and his family, I'm sorry - but I hope my concern was implicit.

 

[Supernaut]

This is a lie. You used to have a line in your JREF signature that said, "Guilters are evil".

How interesting - a little while back "TomCH" gave his opinion that a particular photo of Amanda, taken at the second appeal hearing last week, which was caught as a segue between facial expessions showed "evil incarnate". Rose Montague thought he was trying to be witty (he's incapable of humour).

But regarding "evil incarnate" - I was typing up a post about Giuliano Mignini a while back - perhaps a man after your own heart - and I used that particular phrase, although not in describing anyone. I desisted from hitting 'post' at the time because I realised that I was tending to lapse into over-egged polemic rather too often. But here I go again!

Mignini is a "devoutly religious" man and a sadist. He is, as defined by his actions, an evil man. A paradox? Not if one sees that "evil" can best be understood as stupidity, more specifically moral stupidity (in extremis, moral imbecility) - an innate, congenital inability to excercise judgement of right and wrong, whether in oneself or others (not necessarily without with a shallow 'intellectuallism'). Lack of spiritual evolution. It's rather too common.

Mignini's business is the destruction of others, unfortunates punted his way by the gormless polizi - people he perceives as "evil".

He isn't in any way unique, or even exceptional. All positions of power (meaning, by definition, power over others) attact people like him, which is why adminstrations in which offices such as his exist need to to be scrupulously regulated with 'checks and balances', but all too frequently are not.

Whatever, Mignini almost certainly has his own ideas about what "evil" is (and they probably coincide with yours and TomCH's, if you're serious) - a need to believe that there is such is a thing as "evil incarnate", that "evil" exists in and of itself, "out there", within others, but not in himself.

His personal 'morality' is predicated on an archaic, simplistic list of do's and don't's, virtues and vices - a slavish adherence to a primiitive, medieval social dictat for "virtuousness" which allows him to posture (to himself and the world) as a "virtuous man".

As a corrollory, he feels safe in having arrogated the right to publically excoriate and judge the "vices" of others. But it's particularly rewarding to him if a genuinely virtuous individual such as Amanda Knox is his target - it negates their virtue and reinforces his warped sense of self-regard, which he cannot, and will not EVER question with a even a moment's introspection.

All the while he is maintaining the pretence (again, BOTH to himself and the outside world) that his gratification in seeing his victims consigned to 'purgatory' is born of a "concern for the victims" and "justice". Ring any bells, Fuji, TomCH et al?

 

[nopoirot]

Why did I mention the trial date? I'm glad you asked me that question, Mary-H. But bear with me as I provide a bit of context for my comment.

Many, as you know, believe we have here before us the tragedy of a flower of American womanhood being turned under by the crude, medieval plow of the Italian legal system. A faithful lover is, of course, requisite to this scenario. Enter Raffaele.

It has been demonstrated, time and again, by reference to his diary, that Raffaele initially told the police that he and Amanda did not part company the evening of 11-1, then recanted, admitting that Amanda had left him for several hours, giving him to understand that she was going to Le Chic. This disclosure had immediate, and catastrophic, results. Raffaele, slipping easily into the role of tragic figure, subsequently avers that, cannabis having fogged his brain, he can no longer clearly remember whether Amanda may have parted from him that night. "Reconstructing" what he can recall of events, he's "pretty sure" she didn't leave but . . . .

This, for the faithful, just won't do. They would have it that Raf, shaken by the unconscionable tactics of the Flying Squad, did no more than waver in his story that Amanda had never left his arms the night of 11-1. Might he have gone no further than concede, under pressure and guile, that he had innocently relied on Amanda's assurances in his previous responses? That he could not state for fact certain, of his own sensory perceptions, that she might not, at least in theory, have briefly slipped away?

This, then, is the "load of bs" he laments having told the police in his diary? The subtle shift in testimony that so "astonished" Amanda?

For evidence of the unsavory stratagems brought to bear on Raf, we need look no further than the "confession" of Amanda. Is it not clear that, in addition to yelling at her and cuffing her on the back of the head, the police must have falsely represented to her that they had physical evidence, an eyewitness, photograph, footprint or some such placing her at the scene? As I pointed out in my note # 22935, Amanda's trial testimony is fatal to this web of conjecture. She says she was "astonished" by the disclosure to her by the police of what Raf was then saying. When asked why, she responded "Because he didn't have to do it."

During extensive cross examination (participated in by Raffaele's able counsel), Amanda does not so much as hint that she was confronted by falsified physical evidence by the police, or that Raf was seduced off the reservation by such representations. As earlier remarked, she does not even suggest that Raf's change in story was falsely represented to her, or vice versa.

In your post #22936, responding to my comment about Amanda's trial testimony, you say "I am sure it all came to her later on that he had been in the same type of situation with the police that she had been in." I'm just pointing out that Amanda's "astonished" statement came in a trial which did not even begin until June, 2009, some 19 months after Raf had jerked the rug from under her. If she had not recovered her faith in Raf's fidelity by this time, when do you suppose she did?

 

[Mrs.Columbo]

Mrs.Columbo,

One knife could have made all three wounds. Raffaele's kitchen knife never left his apartment, except when the police confiscated it.

could? I have seen no prove for this so far.

And why wrote Raffaele that he pricked Meredith with this knife? And please do not come and tell me that this is an error in translation.

 

[RoseMontague]

First Magistrate’ hearing in front of Matteini (8 November 2007), p. 210, Darkness Descending.

“Judge Matteini said, ‘There are several points, Mr. Sollecito, that differ between your version of today and your version of events as related on the evening of 5 November just three days ago. Can you explain whether you were with Amanda Knox that evening or not?’
Now it was make-or-break time. Matteini had posed the million-dollar question. The one Mignini had been waiting for.
His pay-off was unexpected, effectively an explosive retraction of his initial confession.
Raffaele said, ‘I’m sorry I told you that crap about not being with Amanda. We were together that evening.’
…But now on the key point of the night in question, he was backing her up… ‘I can confirm that I spent the night with Amanda Knox.’”

 

[Justinian2]

could? I have seen no prove for this so far.

And why wrote Raffaele that he pricked Meredith with this knife? And please do not come and tell me that this is an error in translation.

So now the defense has to prove that the accused are innocent. It's not merely enough that we have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused are innocent? What happened to the idea that the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused are guilty? Isn't it enough that the Italians only need a slim majority and evidence consisting solely of ONE molecule of DNA?

I suppose that if this verdict gets overturned because the majority of the jury have moments of average intelligence that you will retreat into your safe sites and talk to yourselves about how truely bad the verdict was.

 

[Bob001]

"Don't Talk to the Police," Parts 1 and 2

In these two videos, each about 25 minutes long, a law professor and a veteran police detective explain why you should never talk to the police because skilled interrogators can and will eventually get you to agree to pretty much anything. And that's in the U.S. These links have been posted before, but this information is always good to keep in mind when we debate what Amanda and Raffaele may have said and meant during exhaustive questioning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE

And here is a Washington Post account of how homicide detectives work:
http://www.litesrc.com/lemp/homicide/fan/WP_Homicide.shtml

 

[Kaosium]

This, for the faithful, just won't do. They would have it that Raf, shaken by the unconscionable tactics of the Flying Squad, did no more than waver in his story that Amanda had never left his arms the night of 11-1. Might he have gone no further than concede, under pressure and guile, that he had innocently relied on Amanda's assurances in his previous responses? That he could not state for fact certain, of his own sensory perceptions, that she might not, at least in theory, have briefly slipped away?

This, then, is the "load of bs" he laments having told the police in his diary? The subtle shift in testimony that so "astonished" Amanda?

My understanding of what happened was initially the police got him to admit he couldn't know for sure that Amanda was with him while he was sleeping, then later, goes farther and says that not only did Amanda leave, she asked him to lie for her and say she didn't leave. My guess is that was inspired by the police telling him Amanda had implicated him in a murder. He got angry, thinking Amanda had lied about him, so he lied back. This was the 'load of crap' he refers to in the diary.

I'm willing to change my opinion on what happened, as it's based on reading Raffaele's diary and quite frankly when trying to puzzle out translated Italian I find I run the risk of my head exploding. However you and Fine have completely lost me, I don't understand what you're getting at. The best I can make out is you're trying to say that Raffaele never actually retracted his angry lie, and that he's still saying that either Amanda wasn't with him, or that she still had asked him to cover for her? It doesn't make any sense to me, and I figure the prosecution would have capitalized on that were it the case.

During extensive cross examination (participated in by Raffaele's able counsel), Amanda does not so much as hint that she was confronted by falsified physical evidence by the police, or that Raf was seduced off the reservation by such representations. As earlier remarked, she does not even suggest that Raf's change in story was falsely represented to her, or vice versa.

This might have something to do with the fact that apparently even implying police misconduct can get you an extra six years in jail due to the curious custom of 'calunnia' charges. I just listened to her testimony that got her charged with 'calunnia' and still can't quite grasp why she was charged when she even made excuses for the police in relating it. ('To help her remember.')

At any rate we know they did proclaim to her they had 'hard evidence' of her being at her house, due to her 'note' shortly after her interrogation:


"This is very strange, I know, but really what happened is as confusing to me as it is to everyone else. I have been told there is hard evidence saying that I was at the place of the murder of my friend when it happened. This, I want to confirm, is something that to me, if asked a few days ago, would be impossible."

http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/TheInterrogation.html

 

[RoseMontague]

Relevant pages Matteini report:

 

[capealadin]

Slow down. She hasn't been tried on that yet.

I stand corrected. I mean Amanda found guilty, and getting the extra year in jail, for LYING about Patrick.

 

[Kaosium]

could? I have seen no prove for this so far.

Apparently the prosecution totally forgot about the real murder weapon at the trial, they spent so much time tying to pretend the one that never left Raffaele's drawer could have 'possibly' made one or two of the wounds. Massei tried to crib it in at the end but I guess it never was actually established by the prosecution in court. This is actually part of the defense's appeal!

And why wrote Raffaele that he pricked Meredith with this knife? And please do not come and tell me that this is an error in translation.

He could have just been trying to figure out how it was even possible for Meredith's DNA to get on that knife. Odds are it was just contamination or a secondary transfer picked up from Amanda who lived with Meredith, but Raffaele wouldn't know that, he obviously believed that somehow the police had legitimately found Meredith's DNA on one of his kitchen knives. He might have just talked himself into it. What else would he be supposed to think?

 

[shuttlt]

Your "status quo" incarserates, convicts and sometimes executes innocent people. You are standing in the way of reform that is desperately needed.

Is smearing the accused with lies in the press as was done to Amanda and Raffaele part of the status quo that you are protecting? Is destroying and withholding evidence part of your cherished status quo? Are the lab techniques of Ms. Stefanoni that have a high probability of producing false results what you really want used to present evidence in trials? Are breaking seals on evidence and covertly entering the crime scene before the team returns to collect key evidence that was mysteriously left behind in your status quo play book that you want to protect?

Dan O. I hadn't realized what a deadpan wit you were. I realize I have misunderstood many of your past posts.